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Every Man’s Survival Guide to Ballroom Dancing

CHAPTER 10

Posture and Frame

Dancers are the athletes of God.

Albert Einstein

Posture and frame—finally something easy. Well, not really, but it’s a nice change from all that rhythm and counting.

Posture is that thing you were bombarded with as a kid: stand up straight. It’s important in dance not only because it makes you look good—part of looking good is creating nice lines with your body—but good posture makes you feel light in your partner’s arms. While the posture for social dancing should be more relaxed than for competitive dancing, a poor posture will produce a sloppy-looking dance.

Good posture is easy: do a self-exam in the mirror, realign a little and slouch no more! Okay, it won’t be that easy to fix, but mirrors don’t lie and they’re invaluable feedback. Other tools for checking posture are taping yourself with a video camera and asking your teacher to check.

You won’t always have a mirror so, over time, try to gain some body awareness. Do this demonstration right now. Freeze for a moment, holding your body in its exact position. Notice that your shoulders may be shrugged or tense. Let them drop away from your ears. Physically and mentally shift all your upper-body weight and tension to your lower body. Now, imagine being suspended from above; your head is erect, light and alert. Feel better?

TRY THIS: Posture.  Good posture for dancing goes a step further than just standing up straight. While this is an easy exercise, it’s also easy to do incorrectly so have someone make sure you do it right. Hold your arms out to the side, horizontally, so they form a straight line with your shoulders—like a human “T”—palms facing down, thumbs facing forward. Then, rotate both hands 180 degrees so your thumbs go from pointing forward to pointing towards the back, palms facing up. As you rotate your hands let the muscles in your back pull down, as if they were making your hands rotate. You should feel a nice lift in the chest. As you pull down with the back muscles, they should have the feeling of “locking” into position. This is the feeling you want while dancing. I try to do a subtle version of this hand rotation and shoulder lock as I walk on to the dance floor with my partner.

Frame is how you hold your arms in relation to your body, particularly the tone necessary for the arms and torso to create a solid but supple unit. Frame is important because when both partners have the proper frame, it allows the connection necessary for leading and following. When someone has poor tone in his or her arms it’s sometimes referred to as “spaghetti arms”—they’re limp, like wet noodles—and it’s difficult to dance.

Lingo Alert Frame can also be used anatomically to describe the upper part of the body, synonymous with the word torso, so the word frame needs to be taken in context. Again, the frame I’m describing here is the muscular tone necessary to allow a connection with your partner.

Frame is a little tricky as you want tone without being stiff. I’ve heard this saying before: “Frame should be between rigid and limp.” Sure, a bit too cute, but it make’s a good point as most beginners are either too rigid or too limp (I find they’re usually too limp; people who used to dance and think they still know how, what might be describe as being “rusty,” are often stiff).

I’ve heard this metaphor used to teach frame. Imagine you’re a toy doll (ahem, that would be a G.I. Joe action figure for the guys), with arms held like a statue in front of you. Yes, this is way too rigid, but to err on the side of being too stiff is an interesting approach since, once again, I find most beginners are too limp. Also, a doll suggests the correct positioning for the arms, a little above the waist as if you were hugging a huge beach ball. This is the default position for your arms and it’s where they should be if they’re not doing anything else. It’s sometimes called the neutral position and whenever a hand (or hands) is free, it (they) should automatically go to this position, not lie limp by your side.

One of the challenging things for the beginner is to automatically maintain good posture and frame when you’re pre-occupied with everything else that makes a successful dance. Some muscle conditioning, some muscle memory, no problem.

Try This: Maintain Frame. This is an isometric exercise (put your muscles in position and hold them firm with no movement). Assume a good posture (exercise above). Hold your arms out as if you were hugging a huge beach ball and raise them to chest level. It’s best if you can simulate the frame of the standard, closed ballroom dance position illustrated in Chapter 11. Put some tone in your arms, as if they were fire hoses with water surging through them. Check yourself in a mirror. Keep your attention solely on your posture and frame; constantly correct. Try to hold this position—arms at chest level—for a few minutes. If you’re super-new to dancing, you’ll probably feel a little aching in your muscles quickly. Take a break, then repeat. Keep repeating but don’t overdue it the first time or your muscles will be sore the next day. Repeat this exercise over several more days. The goal is for both the position and the tone to become automatic and effortless; the key is to feel your back muscles “lock” into place. This is a good pose to hold when you mark rhythms (Chapter 8) and practice patterns on your own. Your muscles may feel achy the first few times you do this exercise, but they’ll condition quickly.

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